ABSTRACT
The development of art museums in America since the 1870's has been a function of their involvement in the philanthropic process and, to a lesser extent, of their need to justify additional support from government funds. The public museums established in the past ninety years had their origin in creative philanthropy—benevolent action by groups of private individuals who had a complex vision of the potentialities of the institutions they supported. As the American museums matured, the actions and ideas of these individuals were colored by the public character of the institutions they founded and supported. European museums were the product of eighteenth and nineteenth century educational theory, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. In the nineteenth century, American philanthropists did not believe the country had a national art treasure worthy of museum exhibition; our national prestige could not be measured in terms of a lengthy past which yielded glorious examples of a high level of civilization.
